Good question. Unfortunately SQL Server 2005 SP2 does not ignore database snapshots when selecting the "all databases" option in the backup task in a maintenance plan. Seems to be a bit of an oversight on MS part and pain in ours. Maybe this will be fixed in SP3. Hopefully at least one of the many third-party backup vendors figured out you cannot backup snapshots.

Yes, this is another wonderful trick question that we'll have to deal with in everyday life as a DBA.Perhaps, in some countries, where there are 100 million Oracle DBAs and 120 million SQL DBAs, then people have to trick each other to see who really knows his/her stuff, as everyone is a DBA looking for a job and employers have to ask really tough questions.

How many more questions are we going to see like this? It helps no one.

The premise of the question seemed to be “how to reduce the size of the snapshot?” and the answer is – Take another snapshot. I agree this is a crappy question…If a DBA came up to this scenario and was asked to reduce the size of the snapshop file by doing a backup and he replied “you can’t backup a Snapshot” and walked away, I would fire them. I would expect the DBA to say “I’ll take care of it” and do another snapshot to reduce the size.

Brian RL: Be serious about your work, but do not take yourself too seriously {Philip A. Fisher}

Although the question mentions that the snapshot will grow quickly, there is no mention of trying to shrink the size of the snapshot or running out of disk space. It asks what kind of backup is best for a snapshot database.

You might think that this kind of 'trick question' doesn't help anyone, but I would hope that it would help the 79% (at the time of this comment) of the people who got this question wrong.